The Problem with Hollywood's China Pandering

A little less than a year from now, the most Chinese Hollywood blockbuster ever made will hit a theater near you. Transformers 4 will partly take place in China, will feature Chinese stars Li Bingbing and Han Geng, and will include Chinese actors in smaller parts chosen on a reality show.

Every summer, Hollywood throws a bone to the world's fastest-growing superpower in an attempt to place summer blockbusters on lucrative Chinese movie screens. It's no coincidence that most of Pacific Rim takes place in Hong Kong, instead of, say, Tokyo, the rightful home for a monsters-vs.-robots movie. Or that the makers of Iron Man 3 filmed additional footage for Chinese audiences. Or that the theatrical version of World War Z strays from the source material, in which the zombie plague originates in China. It's too costly for studios to offend the Chinese officials who determine which 34 foreign films make it into Chinese theaters each year.

Last year, China surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest movie market, and studios are desperate to get a bigger piece of the action. By far the majority of Hollywood movies that appear on Chinese screens are massive blockbusters, and many of them have done very well. In 2009, Avatar made $200 million in China. Transformers: Dark of the Moon earned $163 million. Iron Man 3 has brought in about $120 million so far.

Films that go out of their way to court Chinese censors have been rewarded in the past. In 2010, for example, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps was shown on Chinese screens. It had no business being there — few Chinese would have even heard of the original Wall Street — but there it was anyway, with Shia LaBeouf's character wooing Chinese businessmen with truly awful Mandarin. Hollywood's China pandering has become so pronounced even Variety is mocking it. An astute producer today would be pitching ideas like Top Gun 2, starring Jay Chou as Maverick's new wingman.

Recently, director Roland Emmerich, in Beijing to promote his film White House Down, said that despite China's growing pull, Hollywood wouldn't make any wholesale changes to the stories it tells. It's worth noting that Emmerich directed 2012, in which China houses the ark that will save mankind. "There will be cooperation, there will be all kinds of stuff, but will it affect the movie so much? I don't think so," the German director told the AP.

That's a dubious claim: It's already affecting the movies. Imagine a big-budget studio movie today that features a Chinese villain or a plot that touches on sensitive issues relating to China, such as human-rights abuses or government corruption. Not happening. In MGM's Red Dawn remake, in fact, Chinese bad guys were replaced with North Koreans in post-production.

Django Unchained was pulled on its opening day, even though the film had been edited to meet the wants of Chinese censors.

Second, and more alarming to Hollywood studios, is that Chinese audiences (like us) may already be growing weary of bloated blockbusters, opting instead for homegrown fare. In the first half of 2013, ticket sales for domestic films in China rose 144 percent to $1.11 billion, while box-office receipts for imported movies fell 21.3 percent from the year before to $675 million. In 2012, a year in which Chinese audiences saw the latest Harry Potter and James Bond films, the surprise hit was Lost in Thailand, a Chinese comedy that earned $195 million, making it the second-highest grossing movie in China ever, behind only Avatar.

It could be that Chinese cinemagoers view Hollywood's pandering as patronizing. Consider last year's Looper. The sci-fi film was made in partnership with DMG Entertainment, a China-based production company, and was heralded as the beginning of a new era of Hollywood-Chinese cooperation. The movie is set in 2044, when America has descended into violence and turmoil while China soars. The renminbi is the black-market currency of choice and a time-traveling gangster says, "I'm from the future: You should go to China."

Despite its blatant attempt to capture Chinese viewers, Looper recorded a disappointing opening of $10 million in China (initial reports of an opening in China upwards of $25 million were due to an accounting error). While the film has a 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it scored just 67 percent on Douban.com, a popular Chinese review site. Many of the complaints on online forums centered on the additional footage added for Chinese audiences that did little more than slow the movie's pace. There were reports of audiences laughing at the added scenes' more awkward moments.

Co-productions must be approved by censors, be partly filmed in China, and contain "Chinese elements." Most have been massive flops: Shanghai (John Cusack), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (Hugh Jackman), The Painted Veil (Edward Norton). Other than The Karate Kid, starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan, no co-production has made significant money, and few have achieved anything close to critical success. Next up is Man of Tai Chi, the Keanu Reeves-directed action flick, which doesn't look like it's going to buck the trend.

Part of the problem, and something studios will have to work around if they want to keep growing in China, is that Hollywood and Beijing's communist government are simply strange bedfellows. Hollywood's supposed to be a bastion of creativity; China's film officials exist to stifle it. Problems inevitably arise. Last year, Chinese censors approved the $15 million The Man With the Iron Fists, starring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu, as a co-production. The movie filmed entirely in China, but Chinese authorities later declined to allow the move to play there. No reason was given.

Producer Marc Abraham summed up the situation nicely: "Filming in China was a great experience," he told the Hollywood Reporter, "but it was beyond my skill set to understand or fathom the inner workings of the Chinese government."

And good luck trying. In fact, not long after that story, the Hollywood Reporter broke the news that because of a dispute over a two-percent luxury tax China Film Group is trying to pass on movie companies, Hollywood studios have not seen a dime from China since late 2012. Together, the studios are owned tens of millions of dollars from the government — but, tellingly, not a single one has pulled a film in protest.

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